Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

In “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets”, irony is a central theme surrounding Maggie’s life because it lead up to her death, and briefly showed a different side to some characters. The characters that had such ironic events were Maggie, Pete, and Mary. Maggie had her epiphany about Pete and the scene with her family; Pete turned out to be insecure and Mary show emotion towards her daughter after she died. Each character eventually had some type of dramatic change at some point in the novel. When someone young falls in "love" they have to go through something big to recognize the mistake. For instance, Maggie was "blinded by love" for those 3 weeks she was with Pete; she recognized her mistake after those weeks. The couple had gone to a bar when Nellie, an old "lady friend" of Pete’s came by. Pete is then blown away by her appearance. Maggie noticed how Pete ignored her while focusing on Nellie; that made Maggie jealous so she decided to leave and because he did not return for her. By leaving with Nellie, it became clear that Pete did not care for Maggie. Also, once Maggie got home, she receives the opposite attention of the "Prodigial Son". Normally after a mistake your family accepts you happily, but they just laughed and rejected Maggie. An old woman invited Maggie to come stay with her. The gnarled women told Maggie, “ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An’ dey’ve kicked yehs out? Well, come in an’ stay wid me teh-night. I ain’ got no moral standin” (Crane 48). Ironically a stranger shelters Maggie instead of her own family; regarding the violent issues, a parent always accepts their kids back. Who would have known that a "Don Juan", an inconsiderate man of women's feelings that fall for him, could feel insecure? With being a “chick magnet” Pete should be a very confident guy as he was illustrated, but that changed when Nellie appeared. Honestly Pete seems very pathetic for getting drunk after Nellie turned him down various times. I’m sure that many, if